Month: April 2014

I spent the weekend at Rosie’s, retreating. That is, Rosie led a retreat in which I participated. If you don’t know her, you’re missing someone special! Rosie is elegant and gracious. More than that, she is full of grace and wisdom. Rosie affirms and honours people; she is gentle and patient and fabulous to be around. I’m glad she’s my friend.

Rosie asked why she hadn’t seen me on Twitter much lately and I responded that I had nothing to say. It’s why I haven’t blogged for a while as well.

Sometimes I like silence. Actually, a lot of the time I like silence. I can sit around a dinner table with a group of women and get to the end of the night without having said a word.

And that’s okay.  I like it that way. I get to listen to ideas and perspectives that are different from my own and tuck them away to think on later. To wonder how others come to have different perspectives and ideas and attitudes and beliefs and wonder more deeply about my own and how they’ve been shaped.

I get to hear of others’ experiences and the stories they tell of their lives.  Lives full of richness and colour and emotion. Relationships, places I’ve never been, things I’ll never do.

I learn about the tapestry of others’ lives: the weaving of experiences and reactions to those experiences, and come to some understandings about how others live and think and be.

I read blogs and comments on blogs, (and am dismayed by the negativity that abounds at times), but I don’t always feel the need to speak; to write. Listening is good.

But Rosie reminded me that writing is good too. There are times when I need to get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper so that I can see my thinking. It is only then that it begins to make sense to me. My head isn’t big enough to keep all of my thoughts inside; I need them laid out, visible, so that I can determine the ones that I feel un/comfortable with, challenged by, or determined to follow through with. I can make connections between the threads of thoughts when I can see them; a task I find much more difficult when they’re tangled around each other inside my mind.

Rosie gave us a journal and asked us to write in it. I did, even when the activity called for a more visual way of thinking. I wrote a lot, made some decisions, felt better. And all because I could see my thinking on the page.

I learnt (again) that sometimes, when you feel as though you have nothing to say, writing can help you move through that.

I also learnt (again) to own my statements, so I’ll write that again: I learnt (again) that sometimes, when I feel as though I have nothing to say, writing can help me move through that.

Thanks Rosie!